Osborn Wins Gold Medal Award From Professional Society

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Scott Osborn

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Scott Osborn, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Arkansas, is the winner of a Gold Medal award presented by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. Osborn received the award at the society's international meeting in Dallas. Osborn won the Massey-Ferguson Educational Gold Medal, which honors people whose dedication to the spirit of learning and teaching in agricultural engineering has advanced with distinction agricultural knowledge and practice.

Osborn was selected in recognition of his exceptional achievements in teaching and for his leadership in developing new curricula in the rapidly developing area of biological engineering and in reform of engineering education to more fully integrate design and discovery-based learning. Osborn has helped to create new biological engineering programs at Louisiana State University, Texas A&M University and the University of Arkansas, where he has served on the faculty since 2001. He is the first recipient from the University of Arkansas in the 48-year history of this award. 

He led the university's departmental transformation from an agricultural engineering to a biological engineering curriculum, including the current focus on engineering sustainable systems for water, food and energy. These programs were formed to take advantage of advances in biology and to expand the application of agricultural engineering beyond traditional areas. 

Osborn is currently serving on the board of directors of BlueInGreen LLC of Fayetteville, which he co-founded in 2004 to commercialize his co-invented technology to dissolve gasses into water for ecological restoration and wastewater treatment. This technology has improved water treatment by reducing the energy and cost to treat environmental and municipal water and has been installed in several locations in the U.S. and internationally. His research work has also created a technique to more accurately measure sediment oxygen demand in streams.